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Except for the plumbing most of the engine area is finished.A few paint touch ups and a little weathering later should do it.
I temporarily installed the engine up against the firewall to see how it looks and now will remove it again to put the fuselage assembly in the kit supplied jig and complete the cockpit area.
I must confess about how easy it is to screw up even when you think that you are being careful.It always usually happens when I set my mind to finishing something at the end of a building session.I just wanted to see the engine mount permanently glued to the fuselage. I super glued it and then much to my horror discovered it was upside down.Luckily I caught it before it had time to really cure.Luckily I had some un-cure handy and it worked out well with no damage to the structure.Darn,you can't let your guard down for a minute!

Main fuel tank assembly.
Here is a perfect example of what is wrong with this kit,quality control!
The main fuel tank casting is in 3 pieces.The tank body is actually 2 left hand or 2 right hand pieces rather than a right and a left.Instead of trying to correct the problem they tried to smoke it through by having the builder correct the mistake.The whole casting requires so much work to look reasonable scratchbuilding it would have been a lot easier in the long run. The seam in the side of the tank is the size of the grand canyon and it took lots of super glue to fill.Fill and sand,fill and sand........
The aircraft structure is way too flimsy to support the weight of the tank so I modified it to be more like the real aircraft.(wouldn't want to pull any "G's" with that thing!!!!)
Now its on to painting it,to hide the mess!

Opinions please!
I am at a stage now with the Camel build where I have to finally decide whether to add the guns or not to the model.Up until now I was of the opinion that they would have been long removed from the aircraft but now I am having second thoughts.
The story is that it is being transported by road to a university in southern Ontario where it will be used for study and research purposes.(this actually happened after the war).
A asked a young friend of mine(13)what he thought and he said that it would be more attractive to the kids if I left them on. The Camel aircraft after all got its name from the hump created by the machine guns and they are a big part of its overall design.
Something tells me that in all likelihood the guns would have been removed ,but then again I am doing this diorama for the kids and I want to please them first and foremost.What do you guys think on or off?

Since the control of automaic or machine gun type weapons was strictly controlled you ;

A. could explain the breeches were disabled.
B. create some two dimensional profile mock ups from "tin" and explain thats what they did to represent guns post war on stunt flyers.
C. Have the guns stowed in some crates nearby.
D. One crate could be open being "inspected by the local gov.t official. Showing and open and empty breech. Or holding the detached gun barrel.
E. Show the "real" metal guns being handed over and flat black wooden ones replacing them. (These could be slightly crude to show the difference.)

Wow! at this level of magnification every flaw sure shows.The things you never see at 1/16th.
The copper fittings were heated red hot with a butane lighter and then dunked in cold water to get the aged patina.Where the nails or screws go I just colored the holes black.With successive coats it will look better.
The lower wing root area is another figment of the kit designers imagination,so I attempted to make it look a little better using some extra fittings I had left over from Jenny(in the end however I will somehow cover this area)I added some extra brace wire fittings for the internal wires.
Some areas were weathered now while they are easily accessible .
Next will be the rudder bar and the installation of the main fuel tank.

Thanks to everyone who responded to my guns off or on question.Looks like 90% want them left on.My modeling bud,Stephen Lawson ,had a great idea.They could be fakes that were used in the air shows and movies of the era.I will have to research this angle and see if any Camels were used in this way in Canada .This would fit perfectly into my story line as a former movie prop airplane being donated to a university or museum.Movies were very important to this era as a means of promoting aviation to the general public. If anyone has any info on this please let me know.

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You know the more I work with this kit the more it seems to grow on me!After all it is the only game in town in 1/16th unless you want to completely scratch build your own,which not many of us is ever very likely to do .It is a compromise between the two and like all compromises it does have its down side.It provides for a good introduction to scratch building in the larger scales and for dioramists like me it is a god send.Imagine almost 9 years of work building three 1/16th scale dioramas using these modified kits?If I had scratch build everything 29 years won't be long enough!
After the Jenny, I guess my expectations were set a little too high for the Camel.I am no businessman and have no idea of the needs of the marketplace in producing kits such as this.That being said quality control is still a major problem with every one of these kits, except the Jenny.
If you are willing to do some scratch building and have the proper independent references and drawings a decent job can be done with these kits.Jim Landon's Nieuport 28 is a great example.(see wwi-models.org)
Those who are used to step-by-step builds will find no comfort here.The information is available but you will have to dig for it.These kits are a challenge for even the most experienced modeler.

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In building the Camel I get a real sense of a fighter pilot's aircraft .It has the same mystic that the Spitfire had in WW2.Everything about this airplane says "top of the food chain", the Peregrine Falcon of the fighter aircraft world of its day.I can only imagine the feeling that a pilot would get sitting in this cockpit.Joy,fear,excitement,a feeling of pilot and machine as one.It must have been a wonderful feeling to master an aircraft such as this.A very real challenge just to fly let alone fight in.Once you were in you were in till the end whatever the outcome.No escape from this cockpit.You either walk away or you buy the farm,period.Modern day gladiators for sure!
It must have seemed very strange to return from battle every night ,sitting in the officers mess sipping your brandy and wondering if tomorrow would be your turn to die! Unlike the foot soldier who lived in constant fear of sudden death in the trenches, the fighter pilot was in a kind of strange world of destruction by day and mock joy of survival at night.Still knowing that tomorrow the cycle would begin all over again.It must have taken nerves of steel to climb into that cockpit every day,day after day and try to be brave until the very end.
__________________
It has been said that the difference between a "pilot" and an "aviator" is that a pilot is a technician,and an aviator is an artist in love with flight.
JohnReid (Aviator)

As you guys know I want to depict this Camel/truck thing as a little story of its own.Because it is so far away from the main stage(the hangar doors) I feel that I can get away with it being a little vignette.
The Camel an ex airshow/movie prop airplane could be viewed as being delivered or being shipped out from Reid and Sons ,either one would work.The airshow aspect of the "Keepers of the Flame" theme is already well represented in this diorama ,so the movie connection is the obvious choice.It could be subtle or showy.Subtle, could be a small film studio sign on the truck or something more showy, all decked out as an advertisement for an upcoming movie.
Any ideas?
I know Mary Pickford(a Canadian from Toronto)operated a film studio in Hollywood along with Douglas Fairbanks (P&F Studios) around this time.